Last revised June 7th, 2000.
This page contains some photos not used at all on the web page!

Another Note: This page would
not have been possible without the help of Dr. Ray Puffer and all the other
folks at the Edwards AFB history office, where they let me spend hours
going through their files on the XB-70, and showed me how to use the copy
machine (hey, I admit it, copy machines and me do NOT get along).

Eric Canale was kind enough to scan many of these
images from photographs.

Three-view plans for the XB-70!
There are now two versions of these images... the large ones, and the
smaller versions, which also print out on a standard printer.

Here's a grab from video of both aircraft together. The downside is that
you only see the necks of them. For the astute, notice that the underside
of Ship Two's nose is painted black. It also shows the differences in the
noseramp-up and noseramp-down positions.

This is a shot of an engineer checking for leaks within the fuel tanks.
Actually, they aren't tanks at all, but just sealed sections of the
aircraft. Consider, this gentleman is STANDING in this tank, and reaching
UP to the top seam. That's a big tank!

Another odd item, the Soviet SU-100, which was blantantly a Soviet copy of
the XB-70. A kind reader sent me a copy of an article on the aircraft,
which has a rather interesting history -- most notable, it was one of the
first fly-by-wire aircraft (the Soviets simply avoiding the high-temperature
hydraulic issue entirely) (The Avro Arrow was appearently a FBW aircraft as
well -- thanks to Dan Garcia for pointing this out). It made a total of ten
flights, which a best speed of M1.4. It was to weigh somewhere around
225,000 pounds, and have about 140,000 pounds of thrust, to achieve Mach 3.
(Note the vastly higher thrust to weight ratio the Soviets figured they
needed!). I suspect that, without lowered wingtips to add stability, and
with the troubles of an early fly-by-wire system, at M1.4 it must have been
quite the white knuckle ride!

This is the closest pre-midair formation picture I've seen. (If anyone has
one that's better, I want it!). Notice how everyone has pulled in
dramatically, and Joe Walker's F-104 has pulled forward of the wingtip, so
Walker is using the side of Valkyrie to judge his position. I've done a
small, large, and cropped image here.

This is a drawing in a USAF publication from early 1962 (meaning the sketch
was made even earlier). The short article listed lots of information, such
as speed, weight, and altitude as "classified." The drawing itself is a
good representation of the earliest design studies. Notice there's no
provision for wingtips. The elevons are shown as one-piece units, and there
are the dorsal strakes preceeding the vertical stabilizers. In addition, it
shows the nozzles projecting beyond the upper fuselage. A lot of these
characteristics carried into flight-pins, etc for the XB-70.

This is a picture of the right-side intake tunnel housing the #4,5, and 6
engines after Ship 1's horizontal splitter came off on the 12th flight, at a
speed of Mach 2.58. Because of detail, the small image here is actually a
cropped closeup, and the large image shows all 3 engines.

The #5 engine itself, which, although severly
damaged, was actually restarted during the final approach to privde some
thrust from the right side of the aircraft. This small image is also a
cropped closeup.

This is another photo from the formation prior to the midair. It's not the
ultimate photo as far as demonstrating the closeness of the formation
(that's a photo I haven't got scanned in yet), and the dark blue background
washed out to a black. I'll include the source scan (another big monster
JPG) in case someone can color-manipulate it a bit (although I'm afraid I
have to do that at the scan-point).

A very cool shot of Ship 1 on what I am fairly sure is it's first landing
(if anyone can prove or disprove, let me know). A very shallow, 1 degree
glide slope was used during landing (a typical airliner comes in a 2.5
percent, I believe, the Space Shuttle at around 22 percent). Angle of
attack was 9.5 degrees, and at 11 degrees, you'd bounce the nozzles off the
ground -- generally considered to be a "bad thing."

The remains of the horizontal splitter (it's that very apex of the delta
wing), from which, on Ship 1's 12th flight and at a speed of Mach 2.58, the honeycomb
"skin" broke away and drove through the
intakes, forcing the shutdown of 4 of the 6 engines (one was restarted for
the actual approach, all were destroyed beyond repair). The splitter was
replaced with a solid-framed unit after this.